As with Part One, this conversation will seem very abstract when viewed from a “me-based” personality. Now, I don’t want to isolate anyone. I am usually a profoundly practical gal, very focused on teaching you how to get to peace in this one present moment, when most of us have a very large amount of mind, fear, and need obscuring our peace.

It’s so fascinating to notice how different life is after a genuine recognition of our True Nature.

All of us spend a majority of our early lives lived through the interpretations of our mind. Our minds are largely fear-based, and have very distinct filters that block true clarity. Some of us get a glimpse of the vast life-force and clarity that is here aside from the mind. And some of us come face to face with the true nature of reality, and get a big shock about how different reality isContinue reading…

If we are being truly honest, the holiday season can be a very awkward time.

There is all this social pressure around being together and being happy. There is a deep conceptual groove that we are going to somehow magically feel “all aglow” in this season. But in reality, it is a season of heavy emotional triggers.Continue reading…

There is a lot to love about the holiday season. One of the things I love most is gifting. I find it so sweet to wander along the streets, all alight with sparkling LED’S on lamp posts, trees and store windows. I love to peek into various stores, feeling around for what might make my loved ones laugh or sparkle inside. I love to discover little treasures that they might savor. I’ve always enjoyed this process, and I start as soon as the leaves begin to fall.

Those of you who have kids around 9-14 years old may feel a little challenged by what to get for the tween in your life. I’d like to share with you some treasures you can give to your pre-teen child. But first, I’ll explain my approach.Continue reading…

Last weekend I was driving up a mountain pass, up about fifty miles of winding narrow road. It was pouring rain and the trees that lined the road were giving off a thick mist, making visibility limited. It was hard to see more than a hundred feet in front of you. The higher the road climbed, the more the rain turned icy and slick.

Ironically, there was a lot of traffic—a lot of very slow traffic moving past bits of vehicle pieces littering the sidewalls, past drivers pulled over, police cars with lights flashing, people on the side of the road looking panicked.

In the fear there is a golden opportunity

That sentence could apply to almost any year, couldn’t it? Globalism and diversity create a push-back for many people, sending them towards a feeling of national ownership—the “we belong here, they don’t” story. So, lots of chaos and divisive sentiment, not just in the USA of course; we have seen similar movements happening recently in the UK, France, Denmark, etc.

Q&A with Kiran Trace

How do the enlightened masters suppress all desire, aversion, and delusion, when these are part of all humans?

This is a great question. A lot of people get confused with this.

Suppression, for the most part, is not going to happen. That effort would require a ‘Mego’ or ego. Enlightened people, masters or not, don’t have enough ego left to suppress anything. For the good or bad.

Now desire, aversion, and delusion still occur. Enlightenment is not a state where human foils don’t occur. That in itself is a delusion, a major delusion! But perhaps it is better to say that it is a misunderstanding of what Enlightenment really is. There are a lot of projections about the Enlightened experience. Enlightenment is a very loaded, confusing word. But there is a real experience, and we can use the E word, or Awakening into our true nature to describe it.Continue reading…

So there is a delicious rhythm called ease, which some might even recognize as happiness, or joy. It feels very soft and spacious, yet somehow grounded. It’s the opposite rhythm of how most of us live: with effort.

And my goodness, there are a lot of teachers and coaches that go on and on and on about how to get it, get more of it, embody it, etc. However, if you have had a life of trauma, violence, chronic depression, repressed rage, and so on, you’re going to find it hard to really hold onto ease. You can put on a happy face—like literally ‘turn your frown upside-down’—but that emotional equilibrium doesn’t really stick. You have to put in a lot of effort to hold on to that ease.

And to further complicate matters, it’s really hard to trust that smile you’re forcing. If you have any kind of integrity, you’ll always be aware of what is under it. You can feel the struggle, the years and years of repression, compromised boundaries, and rage…Continue reading…

My home sits on a low mountain ridge, and there are all kinds of birds that make their homes in the trees that surround my house. In the very early morning, their waking calls and busyness create a sudden contrast to the relative stillness I was saturated in. The contrast makes the stillness dramatic and loud. It echoes with other contrasts in the house; the soft humming from the fridge and the fan in the living room as I move into the kitchen. Because of the contrast, the stillness becomes so available to my senses. My whole being rejoices and lingers with that stillness, being seduced by the quiet, as I wander to the kettle for the first cup of tea.

My mind says, “Do some e-mails, stretch, make a good breakfast, or maybe you could get a workout in.” But my heart says, “Shhh… be in this quiet place and just listen.”

At first, the quiet opens up my subtle senses. I can feel the life force, all this morning energy, a flow of something gorgeously alive, waking into the day. Then my own breath and heartbeat become the dominant life, become obvious.Continue reading…

A couple of weeks ago on the blog I talked about distortion, and how dangerous it can be. In that post, there was another obvious point that I want to focus on today.

In that post I was referencing an article that was trying to give expression to an experience I think most of us are familiar with: an experience of being underwhelmed with life. Things that used to be appealing, aren’t, but in a scary way because we know they shouldn’t feel so dead. Things like romance, or loving our children, or feeling devoted in our spiritual search, or desiring to heal, or even just hoping for a better life… they just don’t have the juice. It gets rather scary when these things that make up the motivation for our lives loose their appeal and we feel like, “Why bother?” Continue reading…